Monday 4 February 2013


Elephants, Dog-biscuits,

and other tales of the far side

28 April 2000


The sky towards Leydsdorp
In Africa, information-age technology maintains at best a shaky position. Our country operates on a curious mixture of space-age equipment, superimposed on a reasonable ancient infrastructure. Out in the country regions, such as where I live, fax and internet communication works – but only so-so.

When you get a little bit of lightning, such as we've had for an hour or two a day ago, something inevitable gets fried somewhere. It then takes the technicians a long time to get round to soldering coat-hangers into the gaps, patching things with paper clips clearing wasp nests out of transformer boxes, or do whatever it is they do to make the system work again. That mild little storm had the phones down for six days. As I’ve said before: In Africa, things get fixed SLOWLY.

The general failing of infrastructure in South Africa is something which has been very evident these last few days. I took a visitor to go and see the tiny little town of Leydsdorp this week. The place became famous for a short while back in 1896, when gold was discovered between the sun-baked and dry, but beautiful hills surrounding it. In those days it was a real little hell-hole. Inspired by newspaper reports that made Leydsdorp sound like a gold-studded Hawaii, waves of starry-eyed diggers streamed towards this unknown spot. All the unlucky ones who hadn't struck it rich at Ballarat and Bendigo in Australia, or in California, or Pilgrimsrest – or even those who had arrived too late in Johannesburg – thought that perhaps this would be their big break.

But when they finally reached the searing hot little spot of bushveld it was usually just in time to be buried there. Most of them would have been travelling through the unhealthy bushveld for two weeks already - precisely the incubation period necessary for malaria. And so many a good digger’s remains were buried in the gold-studded earth that they had dreamed of mining.

Today, as far as the visitor can see, Leydsdorp consists exactly of one old hotel and two houses. Across the main street, a herd of jersey cows craze in idyllic peace, while big, friendly Rhodesian ridgeback dogs greet the thirsty traveller with wagging tail. Old president Paul Kruger’s holiday home still stands, although it is now a place that even cockroaches would blush to call home. A few scattered old coco-pans are the only reminders of a great gold-rush of yesteryear.

The hotel still looks exactly the same. Old game trophies against the walls in the dining room, pressed steel ceilings, honky-tonk piano, and thick mirrors in the bar, of which the silver is peeling. It is as if time had stopped in Leydsdorp a long, long time ago. And the same seems to be the case with its infrastructure. It is surprising, really, seeing how many roads lead to Leydsdorp. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a shock to see some really tall grass growing in what used to be a pretty nice gravel road leading to this small little town. The depressed grader that had listlessly scraped across a mile or so must have broken down, because that’s all that it managed to grade of that entire road – one measly mile.

To make matters worse I came to a stretch of road, nearly halfway between Leydsdorp and the next place, which is so insignificant that it doesn’t even have a name, only to find that I had to turn around. During the floods, deep ruts had been pressed into the surface by passing trucks. These subsequently dried and became rock-hard, and so deep that I just couldn’t drive across them anymore.

There were no warning signs such as: “Warning! Road impassable, 20km ahead, except for four wheel drive vehicles. Proceed with caution.” So that was the extent of what had been planned as a scenic drive past Leydsdorp and through the Harmony block. Maybe some official will forget to steal money from the Leydsdorp road fund one day, and then the roads might be fixed. Leydsdorp will wait for better times. It has plenty of time. In fact, time is all that Leydsdorp has a lot of anyway.

And that's where I had to turn around...
So why did the elephant cross the road? 

But speaking about bad roads, I had to go and see a guy and his wife that owns some land nearby. They manage a famous game lodge in the western Transvaal, and only come down to their property here once in a blue moon. His wife told me that during the past floods she had to drive to their nearest town, Zeerust, early one morning. Unfortunately she happened to run into a cow-herd of elephants that was standing in the road. The problem was that these jumbos happened to be in the same kind of mood as fifty Hell’s Angels who had just come from a pot-bar to find that all their motorcycles had been ticketed and impounded. Faced by several tons of bad attitude, she wisely decided to beat a hasty retreat, only to find her small car’s escape being blocked by some big bull elephants. But being a child of the bush, she knew how to handle bull elephants.

She got out of her car and shouted her best collection of obscenities and insults to the big, lumbering beasts, and was rewarded by their hasty withdrawal. In order to get around the cow-herd, however, Ronelle had to take a little dirt-track detour. After a mile or two, her little car got stuck in the mud, and she had to walk back a long way through the bush – alone and unarmed, and as fate would have it – walking all the way on a selection of some really large lion-tracks! All in a day’s work for her, I guess. But she was honest enough to tell of how her walk did inspire her to some serious philosophical reflection on the meaning of life, and about how well she’d fared in it so far...

Oh, the elephants also make me think of what happened next door to us. The southern part of our Balule reserve, has an international tourist lodge called Motslabetsi. Bordering them is a large game ranch, by the name of Tsukudu. Now, Tsukudu and their neighbours never liked each other much. It appeared to be the usual kind of country bitterness that seems to go a long way back and in which seems as if time is making matters worse. Tsukudu also has a famous game lodge, and they’re quite expensive. One of the unique features of this lodge is that visitors can go for an early-morning walk with a small group of tame elephants and lions, and an armed ranger.

The idea is to feel wild and free, and a little daring. You get to take pictures of dangerous critters from close-by, without the fear of being turned into a wildlife snack. At the end of the walk, you then have a champagne breakfast in the bush, after which they drive you home.

Well, this week someone left a gate open at Motslabetsi’s southern boundary, and their one big elephant wandered off to go and visit the neighbour’s lodge for a change in routine. Tsukudu’s people reacted with alarm, followed the tracks, and then promptly came to the conclusion that the bad people at Tsukudu had stolen their elephant. So they raced off in blind fury and a cloud of indignation, to go and open a case of elephant-theft with the police at Hoedspruit – much to the surprise of the officer in charge who had to process the complaint. I’m not sure how the misunderstanding eventually got cleared up, but it seemed that in the end the matter was resolved quite amicably. The manager of Tsukudu was invited over to come and reclaim his Loxodonta africana. But reclaiming an elephant isn’t always as simple as it sounds. The manager had to walk back, all the while throwing dog-biscuits across his shoulder for the massive beast to pick up. He actually had to lure his elephant home! And so one small man and one giant mammal at his heels walked the dusty roads back to Tsukudu, and yet another interesting little bush drama came to an end, much to the amusement of us locals.

Actually, the man and his wife who are lodge managers told me something else I never knew. Apparently our general area is supposed to be rather known for UFO sightings. They said they woke up last year in the middle of the night from a tremendously bright light that was shining through their tent. They rushed outside, to find the entire landscape lit much brighter than even the full moon could. They couldn’t see the source of the light, but it remained burning for about fifteen seconds before it went out and all became dark again. Never heard a sound. It seems that some people across the river at the Mica mine had also previously seen such strange signs and wonders. It makes one wonder a lot. Some things are just too odd to explain. But I have resolved that if ever I had the opportunity, I’d try very hard to be the first man to capture an alien. Don’t know what to do with it, though. Perhaps just tickle it until it screams, and then let it go. I’ll decide when I get one.

The lodge managers also told me a tragic story of a family that had been murdered by black tribes during the Boer War, on the land which they had recently bought in the north-western Transvaal. When afterwards, and old black man came searching through the rubble, he discovered a little four-year old boy who was still alive. He took the little boy with him across the Limpopo to his home in Bechuanaland (today’s Botswana), and raised him as his own. When the boy was eighteen years old, he took him back to the Transvaal, and finally managed to locate his real father, who had been on commando at the time of the murders.

Although the boy joined his father, they said he never forgot the family that had raised him, and for years afterwards, he used to return to his tribe in Botswana, to look after the old man who had raised him. An ironic little tale, and one which has probably never been recorded in print before. One can only wonder at the drama that lay obscured beyond the lack of historical details behind this little story. Actually, one of the local ranchers in their area also nearly lost their two year old little daughter last year. She wandered alone through the bush for nearly three days before they found her. How during all this time, she had escaped being eaten by lions, wild dogs, leopards or any other amount of critters that would have liked to have eaten her, is perhaps nothing less than a miracle.

In Zimbabwe things are still fairly bad. Britain’s Robin Cook at least had the good old-fashioned British honour and common-sense to reject the pay-off scheme that Mugaba and president Mbeki had tried to extort from the UK. The one where Britain, Europe and America would have been paying compensation for Mugabe’s land-grabbing adventures. I guess Mugabe’s government must be in pretty dire straits because he is now having his army capture wild African grey parrots and exporting them to Europe in his military planes. They sell for about R7,000 each, so it isn’t bad business at all. Especially considering that they cost nothing to produce.

The squatters are still maintaining their presence on farms, and a few more have meanwhile been invaded as well. The ruling Zanu PF party is violently intimidating its opposition party, and are promising a civil war if they should be out-voted. For the time-being there seems to be a kind of a truce, though. The farmers and the squatter leaders are having discussions, and things seem to be stale-mate for now. Zimbabwe’s farmers have boycotted the big annual tobacco sale this week. Where tobacco sales bring in 40% of the country’s foreign income, they only sold about 10% of the usual volume this year. Mugabe and his men are furious about this, the squatters are foaming at the mouth at being called “squatters” and not “war-veterans,” a South African journalist has been picked as the man who was supposed to have planted the bomb at Mugabe’s opposition’s newspaper building, and so it goes on. Trouble and drama in the land of the north.

Oh, and an enterprising South African organization is hard at work raising funds for the protection of domestic animals on the invaded farms. They say the squatters are beating the dogs and livestock of farmers to death with sticks. The Farmers Union has meanwhile also announced that the land-invasion has been orchestrated by Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organization. Apparently some of his Stasi-trained agents are even after some of his opposition that live in exile in Europe at the moment. Well, so much for African democracy...

Even here in South Africa, more calls for similar land-grabbing has been heard this week. In the meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s problems have contributed to make our currency nose-dive further, and upset the stock market quite a bit. Zimbabwe’s billion dollar a year tourist industry is now virtually completely dead, and safaris are also being cancelled by foreign hunters. Anyone who is looking for a really cheap safari or adventure holiday in Zimbabwe – now is the chance!

Back on the home front, a couple of 65 was killed near Tshipese in our province, this week, and another farmer and his wife has been killed near Tzaneen, one of our two biggest towns. Near Pretoria, a 24-year old paramedic that was assisting a woman giving birth next to the road, was also shot and killed. His heart has just been transplanted into an old man, and at least his death has made the life of another possible. His young ambulance driver was also shot, and is still fighting for his life in ICU. Nothing was stolen. Apparently they had been killed because they were white.

As usual, my neighbour always has news to tell. His latest contribution for this week is about another HIV case. He was doing a caesarean operation on Wednesday, when the young trainee-doctor that was assisting him, pulled back a flap of skin with her hands instead of with an instrument as it is supposed to be done. In the process she jabbed her hand into the needle if my friend’s syringe. Unfortunately the patient turned out to be HIV positive... So there you go again. More hell for yet another poor young doctor, forced to work in the miserable state hospitals for two years before she can get a medical license from the state...

Yesterday my friend had to drive to one of the other big state hospitals in Bushbuck ridge, hoping to borrow some equipment for their hospital. He says their anaesthesia machine is already a museum-piece, but its all they’ve got. He now has to purchase some new machines, but the situation is interesting. While the State allocates funds for the purchasing of two or three machines this year, there won’t be any funds for consumables. So you’ve got to buy a machine that doesn’t need filters, disposable containers, bags and things that break. Pretty tough in today’s world to find a machine like that. But the government knows best. That’s why we voted for it, after all.

He also had an interesting incident when he had to give anaesthesia to an enormously overweight woman. They use a metal object that looks a bit like a big shoe-horn, called a laryngoscope, to keep the patients from swallowing their tongues and to keep their air-passages open. Somehow, the laryngoscope got stuck in a gap between the woman’s front teeth during a pretty critical moment, and they all first had a good sweat, and then a good laugh after he managed to get the tool out without breaking her teeth. (I’m told that the Cuban doctors working in our state hospitals are pretty good at breaking front teeth in this manner – supposedly not at all an uncommon occurrence.

Well, perhaps it is good that we don’t realize what happens to us when they put us to sleep. His superintendent also forced him to sew up the lips of a drunken man whose mouth had been smashed by a brick - without anaesthesia! The superintendant is a doctor from the Congo who is in charge of this hospital, simply because he wouldn’t allowed to practise anywhere else. He also happens not to like drunks. So my friend had to first cut open the man’s swollen lips with a scalpel and then sew them up, without the comfort of local anaesthetic - something which is tough on both doctor and his squirming patient. Yes, some of these African doctors can be a harsh in their approach. Perhaps medicine in the Congo is practiced differently than over here.

It takes a special breed to become a bush doctor, and I pity my poor friend. The conditions are depressing. In the housing compound where my neighbour lives when he is working at the hospital, one of the fellow-doctors is a man who keeps goats in his yard and in his house. Also, my neighbour’s house maid is continually stealing his coffee, tea, sugar and other household articles. Furthermore, she’s also brewing marula beer when he is not at home, using the high-tech plastic containers that he has bought for the storage of his equipment. He complains a lot, but he regards himself as a child of Africa. An adventurer and a sportsman who heals people for a living, and who will continue doing it for as long as it is possible. It takes all kinds, I guess.

Have a good week you all and next time you’re caught in a traffic jam, be thankful you’re only boxed in by cars and not elephants!